Signs of Me Reappearing

I burst out of bed today wanting to write a blog post. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that feeling and it feels like such a relief. A relief because writing is an integral part of who I am and so if I’m not wanting to write, then I most likely am not doing too terrific, you know? Not that I’m likely to admit that I’m not doing well, but it seems okay to retroactively admit to it.

Wanting to write, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that I have a topic in mind. I’m out of practice of forming topics in my head that would work in a blog post, so I’m free-styling it here. There are so many ideas and topics to choose from. Do I write about personal feelings I’m going through? Politics? (I hear a collective roar of “No!” coming from the ethers.) The weather? Astrology? What it’s like being married to a Dutch man and living in another country? My 2 cats and their endless antics? The chaos and madness engulfing the planet? Spiders and how they’re misunderstood?

Really, I’m just wanting to write something from my heart. (Did I just hear someone rolling their eyes at me?) Which may seem like that would mean writing something sappy and emotional, but then you don’t know my heart. There is something of a court jester in there. Mischievousness written all over it.

I’ve been pretty serious (and MIA) the last couple of years, and understandably if you know all that’s gone on. But I’ve recently been seeing signs of recovery and healing taking place in me. Like learning how to laugh again. Being able to think of my son without pain crashing in on me. Remembering myself when I was whole and becoming that again.

Some things take time, like healing. Which I have no patience for. I mean, I’ve learned to try to be patient with it, but the whole time I’m pretty much looking at my (non-existent) watch and tapping my foot. I want to be fine now. You know, live in the moment, the only moment is now. So I’m like, okay, I’m healed NOW. (Looking around to see if it worked.)

The crazy thing, is that I know that that could actually work, but it would require that I felt and believed that to be true all of the way down to my bones. Which I don’t, because I’ve been here long enough to have accumulated enough examples from experience that have shown me otherwise in which I use that ‘evidence’ to allow doubt into the process, slowing it down. My healing process involves slowing down enough to understand what my doubts and fears are, and then seeing them with new eyes. Are they really true? Like big picture, let’s be straight with ourselves, true? I then ease my way into the new perspective until *pop*, there I am with more room to breathe inside myself.

For example, I’ve had many experiences with individuals who have aimed their own personal fears and projections onto me, so much so that over time I came to feel and believe that I was not loved or liked. When that is your environment’s response to you day in and day out, you can start to become confused about what is true or not true about you. Was I doing anything I was doing for the reasons that those other people in my life thought I was? No. Did they bother to ask me or find out? No. Did they continue to declare their ideas and reasons for my behavior with the fervor of a southern baptist preacher to me and all who would listen? Yes.

In that kind of environment, I’m not getting any feedback from the outer world that I am loved or of any value. I do not get to have a say or voice in that situation. Me and my side of the story have been effectively silenced. The truth of me gets lost because I’m the only one who knows it and who is trying to keep it alive in myself while others treat me as if their own story or other’s of me is true. This is not loving or supportive behavior.

By the way, this isn’t about judging or blaming them, or me being a victim. My only interest lies in understanding what happened so that I can free myself from it. I’m observing and taking notes of what I’ve been able to piece together so that I can understand where my own pain stems from so that I can help myself. It just happens to involve other people and so it’s hard to omit them from the story.

So as I was saying, over time I came to feel and believe that I was not loved or wanted in the world by others because that’s what was reflected to me. Saying that and how that feels are actually two different things. How it feels in day to day life is like I’m a constant disappointment. That no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I overcome, I will still not be liked or loved or seen or valued. It feels like I have nothing to offer the world. It feels like I have no place here. Like I’ve come to a party that I wasn’t invited to. Like nothing I do matters or makes a difference. That there is no point to me or my existence.

Which leads me back to my healing process and this example. What’s the truth of that pain in me, big picture, let’s be honest? “I am not loved or liked.” Is that really true? Well, I mean, the hurt part of me wants to say yes, yes that is true. It’s so sad. (blubbering madly into my handful of Kleenex) But is it actually true? Okay, it’s true in that those people that treated me that way were not coming from a loving place. But does that really have anything to do with me? Or is that more to do with the state of torture they are living with inside of themselves?

It isn’t really me that they are seeing. So if it isn’t the truth of me that they are seeing, then my belief of not being loved or liked is back on the table for negotiation. Also, I think I may need to find some people who are not lost in the sauce in their own pain. Which is what I did and is when I started to get validation that my hypothesis (that maybe it *is* them and not me) might have some merit. Getting some distance between me and those blind to anyone but themselves, and then seeing the contrast of how it feels to be around people who can see past themselves, was the difference of night and day.

But it is a weakness in me. When things become challenging in my life, I have to really watch this part of myself. It’s something that is too easy for me to believe. I have had to learn and relearn over and over, what it feels like to be loved. I don’t mean in my thoughts, I mean in my whole body. Because being loved is something that is felt from the top of your head down to your toenails. It warms, relaxes, and calms you. It is a full state of being, not a mental construct. It is something experienced within your being.

I feel like there is a general consensus that if you are a good person then you are a loving person. We lean too much on looking like a good person regardless of how we feel inside. We don’t want to be unloving or bad people. But I’ve personally met a lot of good people who were not loving and a lot of bad people who were in fact loving. Understanding the difference is critical for me to make better choices about who I let into my inner circle, and doing this is important for my healing.

Along with this I’ve had to learn about all kinds of other things such as boundaries and what my rights are as a person. That I don’t have to be walked all over. I can use words like “no” and “I don’t want to”. I’ve even had to learn how to feel my own feelings again versus what I had been told my feelings were. And that just because everyone else is going along with something, doesn’t mean it’s right, and in those situations I will stick with my feeling even if it means standing alone. Listening to myself even when no one else will. <– And that, was the beginning of me building self trust.

I began to provide and give to myself what others had not been able to. I started to listen and trust myself more, even if it seemed to make my life harder. The more I did this, the more I stayed true to that voice deep inside my core, the stronger I began to feel. The stronger I felt, the clearer my life became. The more aware I became of what was and was not okay in my life. Which led to me making changes. Ultimately walking away from everything I had once known. I became more focused on what was actually good for me instead of wondering what others might think of my actions. They were going to think whatever they wanted to anyways, but the difference being, I stopped trying to control that by limiting my own actions.

Allowing for that, made room for me to focus more on what I personally felt about myself. Did I think I was evil manifested? Does it matter? If I was, then really, what could I do about it? And way to paint the world white and black, as if it’s really that simple. Way to dehumanize me and invalidate me as a complex person with many different faucets of my personality. No, I don’t feel that I am evil incarnated. So what does that mean? Well . . . it probably means that I can start lightening up a little, ya know? Be a little gentler and kinder to myself then I had been treated by others.

Which lead me to finding love within myself again. And when you’re not cowered or hunkered down in trembling fear, it opens up your world again and memories begin to return. Things like the memory of the truth of yourself. It begins a spiraling up in self instead of spiraling down. Feelings like relief of being able to let go of all of the dumb dumb things about yourself that you had come to believe, watching as they break and fall away from you. It is simply liberating.

By the way, I’m like smooshing years of processing and trial and error into one post. It may sound like I figured it out in a matter of hours, but I assure you this has been a monumental undertaking in my life. In the moments that I’ve hit the sweet spot of balanced and healed in myself, there comes the realization that I could have gone into that place immediately if I hadn’t got hung up or identified too much with what was wrong or out of balance in me. That if I were to fully believe in the real me inside, that it would have brought me straight there to that place of wholeness, which suits me and my patience levels just fine.

The problem is, when I’m not in that space, I forget. I can’t remember how or why that is true. So I go the longer healing route and then remember again. I get knocked out of there and then walk there again, but then I begin to see that I’ve left myself bread crumbs to show me the way back. Again and again I’ve walked this path, hoping to wear a groove into the road to make it easier to find. Because I know one day, I’m going to go there, and I’m not going to come back.

Anyways, I was walking that road again the last couple of years, marking it even more fiercely than the last time I was there. Like, m*therf@cker, I am NOT going through this again, you WILL remember this and not forget again! (She said to herself oh so compassionately.) I hate seeing the same tree trunk that I passed years ago.

So yeah. Yay! for the ‘wanting to write a blog post’ marker I reached this morning. I don’t remember what comes after this, but I do know that it’s the road I’m wanting to be on. 🙂